Les Misrables [DVD] [1 disc] [025192150548]

Academy-award winning director Tom Hooper's adaptation of the beloved musical LES MISERABLES makes no major changes to the original's plot. The story follows former prisoner Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman), who, after being released from the watchful eye of police officer Javert (Russell Crowe), is unable to find work because of his status as an ex-convict. He eventually steals from a local church, but when apprehended, the priest claims that Valjean was given the valuables. This triggers a change in Valjean, and he constructs a new identity for himself as a pillar of society and a local businessman. Years later, he adopts a young girl named Cosette, whose mother Fantine (Anne Hathaway), a former employee of his, became a prostitute and died a horrible death in the gutters after being fired. As the years progress and the French Revolution begins to foment, a grown Cosette (Amanda Seyfried) falls for a passionate revolutionary named Marius (Eddie Redmayne), while Javert begins to close in again on Valjean's secret past.

3.5 stars out of 5 -- "[A] reverent Hooper plays everything to the rafters, a strategy that admittedly yields great rewards."Box Office

"[M]uch of the rest of the cast is terrific...[particularly] Jackman andAnne Hathaway, who settle into their roles like they've spent their lives waiting for this opportunity."Movieline

"[T]his production is visual to the max, with an epic physical scale and grandeur the play couldn't possibly have."Los Angeles Times

"It's big, and also intimate, but best of all it's an affecting adaptation of a show that has touched hearts all over the world for a quarter-century."Wall Street Journal

"[Ms. Hathaway] holds you rapt with raw, trembling emotion."New York Times

"[Barks] brings across her character handsomely and with just the right air of sweet, sad, resigned longing."A.V. Club

"Hooper opts for a gritty, authentic approach -- at once intimate and epic -- that generally eschews theatrical flourishes....His leads respond in kind with unabashedly emotional, tear-sodden turns..."Total Film

"LES MISERABLES is sweeping, as would be expected given the scope of the hugely popular stage musical from which it is adapted. But it's also wonderfully intimate, thanks to Tom Hooper's deft direction."USA Today

"[Hathaway] is able to deliver 'I Dreamed a Dream,' the despairing solo of fallen grisette Fantine, with a raw dramatic intensity rarely seen in musicals..."Sight and Sound